This is story of our daughters Taylor and Lauren, both with profound hearing loss, and the journey of getting and utilizing cochlear implants. Both have congenital deafness due to the Connexin 26 gene mutation.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Last Thursday, I took Taylor back to the Hough Ear Institute. We always try to watch the implant area closely for redness or irritation. Occasionally, infections can occur. Taylor's dad noticed when putting on the coil that there was a lump right below the CI on her head. It felt like a cyst. We were able to get right in with our surgeon and had him take a look. He found two lumps, and started asking me about bug bites, etc. because he thought it was swollen lymph nodes associated with a skin irritation. I remembered that while we were on vacation, my mom had put Taylor's hair in pigtails and we found a little seed tick on the back on her head near that area. It was from that tick!! I hate ticks but what a celebration to know that all is well with the cochlear implant. :)

We recently passed the one-year mark since Taylor's bilateral CI activation. What a year it was! We made at least 40 trips to Oklahoma City for therapy and mapping appointments. That would be about 320 hours in the car and 19,000 miles on the road. I can pour chocolate milk in a sippy cup and hand out snacks while driving on the Interstate... and I can really extend an arm to save the CI's from being dismantled when boredom takes over. I think I've put off writing this blog because the one year anniversary of CI's requires a special note and brings back a lot of emotion from that time one year ago when I wrote "Just as You Are...", hoping for so much, but content with my wonderful little deaf girl as well.

Taylor's expressive language is exploding right now, as Derek's did after his second birthday. She is getting pronouns - will look at a picture of herself and say "me." She will hold the camera and say "cheese!" I can get her to "parrot" me. For example, when reading an alphabet book recently, I would say a letter and she would attempt to repeat it before I went on to read the dialogue associated with that letter. She can point out almost all colors when we name them, and can say most of them herself. A recent shopping trip went like this -- "Look! Yellow! Blue, Green, Red, White." She identified the colors to me as she found them. She will ask for a bath before bedtime and a hot dog if she is hungry (her favorite food). She is also into counting still, and now she makes it to about six.

We can have conversations, which is really fun. On Saturday, I asked her if she wanted to watch a movie. She said "Tutu movie" --translation - her ballerina movie. I looked in the cabinet and it wasn't there so I asked her where it was. She said, "Right here, Come on" and then walked into my bedroom to show me it.